Google executives - Credit: Joi Ito (CC BY)
The Google executives have been summoned to court in Italy.
The prosecutor, Francesco Cajani, ordered the defendants to appear in a Milan court on February 3 to face charges of defamation and failure to exercise control over personal data, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The order comes after an investigation into a complaint filed by an Italian advocacy group for people with Down syndrome, Vividown, and the boy’s father.
The video was filmed from a mobile phone and posted on the site in 2006. It shows four male high school students in the Italian city of Turin humiliating the youth.
Although official notice of the decision had yet to be received, a Google spokesman said in a statement the case risked setting a worrisome precedent. Google did not believe it should be punished for the way its site was used by third parties, he said.
Imagine if Google lost and web 2.0 just died. This is ridiculous, there’s no way they can be found guilty. While this isn’t directly tied to copyright, I think this is important to FC because a precedent like this where an entity is found guilty for the actions of a 3rd party is not good for the peer to peer (using the term loosely) world.